Welcome to Fantasy F1 season 8, the first to be hosted by me. Only a few die hard players remain but whatever, less work for me. You've all played this before, the rules are broadly similar to last year's (thanks D.J).

New rules have been written in bold and coloured.

RULES

You are the team principal of a Formula 1 team created by you. Your team has been entered to compete in the 2017 Formula 1 World Championship, but there’s a problem, you don’t have any drivers, so obviously you’ll need two of those.

Driver choices are managed by Pools and Budgets. If you want to hire a driver, you have to pay their fee, which can range between being completely free to being worth over £40 million depending on the driver. Your total budget is £50 million, so spend wisely. Each driver can only be chosen once.

Once you’ve chosen your two drivers, you must then (pretend to) travel to the circuits and watch your guys on the track go out and net you constructors points. Fantasy F1 race and grid results are based off real life and you watch the television to see how your drivers are getting on, ideally willing them on to do well. Once the season ends, the winner is the person with the most constructor's points. The Constructor’s Championship is the only one that matter in Fantasy F1, so choose your team wisely.

Additionally, in Fantasy F1, points are awarded in both qualifying and the race, they are as follows.

The fastest lap bonus point returns for 2017. One point for the team who gets the fastest lap.

Still, what you've gone down a fork in the road and doing badly? No worries, as driver lineups are never final and can be changed during the season provided you find another team who is willing to swap drivers with you.

The season itself begins in March, but before then, there are a number of important tests taking place throughout February where teams will be able to evaluate their packages while they prepare for the championship ahead.

Important Additional Information

This season, we have 10 spots on the grid, so be sure to get your entry in before all the places are filled. Double teams are allowed as we only have six teams this year, so please register teams separately if you wish to have a second team. Second teams will be taken over if another player wants to join midway through the season, although this seems unlikely. Second teams can only be registered after all participants have signed up with their primary team.

Car Liveries Information

All teams must design a livery for their 2017 challenger, you can do this using the following template.

If you are having trouble designing your car however, not to worry, you can commission a designer (me or D.J although I'm more time limited these days) to put together a livery for you.

You are welcome to unveil your 2017 challengers at any time once you have registered, and once revealed, they will be added to the list of competing teams, however, all cars must have their liveries ready in time for the season's start.

How to Register

To compete in Fantasy F1 2017, simply register your team on this here thread by using the following form.

When registering, your team can choose an engine from any supplier: this is Fantasy F1, after all. All engines are provided free of charge because it's good publicity for the manufacturers, but once you have an engine, you are more than welcome to add their logos to your car design should you so wish.

Engine Rebadge Rule

Once you have chosen the engine you will run this season, you are more than welcome to re-badge it (using the engine badge option on the form), and run it under a different name (for example, in previous F1 seasons, we have seen Sauber-Petronas, Prost-Acer, and Benetton-Playlife among others), however, you may retain the original suppliers name should you wish to.

Numbers

For 2017, you may choose the two numbers that your cars will run during the coming season, the numbers you choose however, must be between 2 and 99. Only the defending champions may use No.1, although they are not obligated to. No two teams can share numbers so if your desired choice is already taken, you will need to select something else. Numbers are allocated on a first come first served basis.

Driver Pools

Choose your drivers here (prices are determined by recent form), remember though, each driver can only be picked once, and you must keep to your £50million budget.

Also, you need to pick one driver from each pool, not two from a single pool.

ミドリ wrote:Ford don't own Jaguar any more. That's the smartest driver lineup pick on the field, though. It's what I would have gone for if I hadn't immediately jumped the gun to get Lewis.

Valtteri for £42m is redundant btw.

Yeah I wasn't sure what to put as I wanted Jaguar, and thought they were but it's Tata Motor's apparently. They do get some of their engines from Ford still, but it'd make more sense for them to use their own engines.

That's what I'm hoping for, but it really comes down to whether Mercedes run away with it again or not.

Good afternoon, folks, we are proud to present our challenger for 2017, the FR08!

Switching from Mercedes power to Honda, we have forged a new and dynamic partnership which will usher in a new era of F1 success. We have also renewed our partnership with our french sponsor Carrefour, which took a year out in 2016 after our previous contract (2012-15) had come to an end. We also welcome UNI QLO to the team, who as well as sponsoring the cars, will be providing the team with their team issue clothing for the season ahead.

Good afternoon. Somehow it's time for me to unveil our fifth car (where did the years go?). For once, continuity has been the aim here at SSA. Our partnership with Aston Martin continues into a second year, and thus so does the Gulf sponsorship and livery. However we do have a few new sponsors, but more importantly, new drivers. We thank Raikkonen and Hulkenberg for their great season last year, pushing us up to third in the championship. However we have decided to reclaim a driver who was so cruelly stolen from our Junior division last season. Max Verstappen demonstrated such incredible skill during his season at Midori that we felt compelled to offer him a place in our main team. We also welcome Kevin Magnussen as our second driver.

Fuji Honda Press Release
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We are pleased to unveil our car for 2017, though our drivers are yet to be officially confirmed, and the team may still be purchased ahead of the season opener.

Good afternoon everyone, today we announce the SAF Racing - 03, or SAFR-03 for short. As you can clearly see the livery department was on holiday when it was designed this year but I feel it invokes our Italian heritage with our power unit manufacturer of Ferrari, re-badged as Alfa Romeo. Our partnership with Shell and Microsoft continues for a third year and they are keen to see progress this year after a poor performance in 2016.

After a fantastic debut season in 2015 we had a poor season in 2016, finishing near bottom in the constructors , this year we are aiming for mid table, we have a great driver lineup in Carlos Sainz Jr and Nico Hulkenberg, so its just up to SAF Racing to give them a solid car capable of points at most races.

(Woeful design but everyone can stomach it the few times they'll have to look at it, I had a little bit of trouble getting used to GIMP with the layer system, may try a redesign at some point later in the season if I have time, plus it's probably a decent learning exercise)